Wednesday, December 28, 2011

52 at First Glance, Part Four

13. Superman
Writer: George Perez
Artist: Jesus Merino (Sorry for not inserting accents on both Perez and Jesus, guys! Lazy!)

I said what I needed to say about Superman in the Action Comics blurb. So now I'm just left to wonder: why so many Super Comics? DC's 52 has Superman, Action Comics, Superboy, Supergirl, and Justice League. Only Batman and his clones have more comics dedicated to him. Is it because 52 comics were just too many to fill with heroes or villains that comic fans would be interested in? I'm not sure any of the titles actually follow villains. Is Catwoman really a villain? Or a noble thief? Suicide Squad's cast is mainly villains but they're being forced to do government black ops work. I think that Grifter guy who looks like an orphaned Image character might be a villain but I don't know anything about him. I'm surprised they didn't make one of their titles a Lobo title. Or is he dead? Or did he fall out of favor with the fan boys when he became the punching bag of the DC Universe because every writer wanted to prove that their hero was so good they could defeat the one guy in the DC Universe who couldn't lose? And so he got his ass kicked in many different ways across nearly every DC title.

So. I probably wouldn't have picked up Superman. Perhaps I would have tried it since George Perez is writing it and I have fond memories of his run on The Teen Titans way back when. And the cover has Superman seemingly destroying the Daily Planet, so that means big changes in the works, right? So maybe. Maybe I would have picked this up.

Why does Supergirl need two writers? Oh, is that a riddle? Um, is the answer because one writer alone can't make her interesting? Is it because she's like a writing desk?

I don't know the team of people working on this book but I'd pick up this book just because of a long-time curiousity about Supergirl. And even though the cover is just her floating in space, she has a certain contemplative trepidation that makes me wonder what she's up to. Maybe she just has to pee and it's a long way to the next space rest stop.

I don't know the team working on this comic either. But I'll always give a new Batman title a decent shot. I remember in the eighties (unless it was the early nineties. Super power activate!) when Legends of the Dark Knight first began that I had to pick it up. I always liked Batman, probably for a lot of the same reasons a lot of other people like Batman. But also for the reasons that I grew up watching reruns of the television show on Channel 36 in the Bay Area. And no matter how silly things might have gotten, Batman's villains were always odd and memorable. And Detective Comics and the Batman title were well into the multiple hundreds by the time I was reading comics so that was a turn off to me.

Which is why DC probably keeps doing these restarts! Because of jerks like me who refuse to start reading a long running title! Except in special occasions like when a favorite writer takes over or the comic is called John Constantine, Hellblazer.

So Batman would have been on my reading list even if I hadn't decided to make the whole list my reading list. Way to go, killer!